Thursday, April 2, 2009

Why Is CNN Telling the Truth?

I was working out today and someone had turned on CNN. I was stunned that CNN was warning of an attack on the dollar and a dollar crash. This has been true for some time (I have been blogging about this for several years) but I was stunned that CNN is openly discussing this. China, Russia, the EU and other countries have denounced the Bush-Obama bailout and the massive stock market subsidy that the Bush-Obama administrations have effected. Moreover, CNN allowed a speaker to say that Obama would be a one-term president.

But why is CNN willing to cover this? CNN reflects establishment, and it is certainly in the establishment's interest to lie about the very shaky ground on which the American monetary and financial system rests.

I am back in the stock and gold markets. I got into the stock market at S&P 760 or so a few days before the 500 point run up about 8 days ago. I got into gold stocks and gold over the past few days.

Howard S. Katz's "conservative" portfolio is now only a few percent below its October 2007 level. I have fared worse on my own. My total accounts are down about 15% since October 2007. Katz is very bullish on gold stocks right now. He is also bullish on the stock market. I am close to 100% invested for the first time since 2005.

In the 1930s Franklin D. Roosevelt created an economic system based on virtually unlimited power on the part of financial interests, especially Wall Street and commercial banks. He did this by ending the gold standard and permitting an unrestricted fractional reserve approach whereby the Fed has unlimited power to expand the money supply. The Republicans jumped on board with this system in 1971 when Richard M. Nixon abolished the international gold standard that had been reintroduced in 1944.

In 2008 George W. Bush and in 2009 Barack H. Obama intensified the approach. Instead of government by banks, they introduced government by Goldman Sachs. The Secretary of Treasury under President Bush, Henry Paulson, was a former Goldman executive. Barack Obama received heavy contributions from Goldman. The Bush-Obama administration ensured that all of Goldman's debtors would receive considerable bailout money. Goldman Sachs is the nexus around which all the recipients of the bailouts revolve.

I am trying to figure out whether the US government is worth seriously discussing any more. I am also having trouble deciding whether the Republicans and Democrats have a grain of difference between them. American conservatives and American progressives have one allegiance: the corporate charter of Goldman Sachs.

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Mitchell Langbert

About Me

I have researched and written about employee benefit issues and in my previous life was a corporate benefits administrator. I am currently associate professor of business at Brooklyn College. I hold a Ph.D. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, an MBA from UCLA and an AB from Sarah Lawrence College. I am working on a project involving public policy. I blog on academic and political topics.